


a peek of your soul

by ohallows



Series: give up control [2]
Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Loss of Bodily Autonomy, Possession, group hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 09:02:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21159068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohallows/pseuds/ohallows
Summary: Zolf is surrounded by darkness nearly all the time, now. He’s hanging suspended in some expanse of his own mind, locked inside and floating. He doesn’t have a body, he knows that, and he has no way of tracking time passing. It could have been hours, it could have been days, it could have been weeks since he was infected. There’s no way to tell.He’s terrified.





	a peek of your soul

**Author's Note:**

> i’m not going to pretend to have any justifications for this fic bc [ben voice] i am nothing if not myself and also dark zolf hot, dont @ me

They are victorious, in the end. They always are, even if Guivre had given them a bit more of a fight than they’d been expecting at first. Compared to subduing the might of a dragon, and a  _ meritocrat _ no less, a small, insignificant little creature such as the one they’re possessing now proves to not be much of a challenge at all. 

The dwarf will do, they think. He has power and fight and drive, and that will be helpful for their cause. He will be a good addition to the ranks. They loosen their tendrils slightly, to closer inspect him. His consciousness is stuck in the dark place of his mind, and he hasn’t stopped banging on the metaphorical walls of his prison since they trapped him in there. 

His rage is palpable, his fear a sweet snack that they can use, mold and shape into emotions that better suit their own cause. They stand, they spin the fiery weapon in their hands, and they  _ smirk _ , a crack along his face as they stare down the other four members of the party he’d been wandering with. 

The four others run away, although the little halfling strains at the arms of the strong orc woman, struggling to get back and yelling their host’s name. It’s all useless; they give chase for a moment, fire-tipped glaive stretching out in front of them, but they have other orders. Other goals. Other ways to re-mold the world into what they believe it should be.

They will win. 

It used to take too long for the host’s body to adapt to their particular way of sustenance. Earlier forms of  _ them  _ had given the host seven days to incubate, to prepare for the eventual taking over of their minds, their limbs, their  _ blood. _

They’ve changed since then, grown. Since the beginning, their goal has been to create more, to  _ become _ more, and the virus has changed as they’ve spread, learning more about the world and its people. What used to take seven days now takes none, as they inhabit the host and  _ force _ its body to change with them, to accept them. 

They learned that the uninfected watched for blue veins, and so they took hold before the blue veins could show. They’re sure they will have to change again, and they will, and they will win. 

And until then, they will  _ last. _ Each host is the same. Eating, sleeping, drinking,  _ breathing _ … all useless processes that do nothing except sustain the body that they’ve taken over. They indulge the host’s body; what would a host without energy, without power be to them? 

They learn. They grow. They  _ consume _ .

—

_ Zolf is surrounded by darkness nearly all the time, now. He’s hanging suspended in some expanse of his own mind, locked inside and floating. He doesn’t have a body, he knows that, and he has no way of tracking time passing. It could have been hours, it could have been days, it could have been weeks since he was infected. There’s no way to tell.  _

_ He’s terrified.  _

_ Everyone must have gotten away. They must have; Zolf refuses to believe anything else. The thing, the… the entity, the infection, whatever it is that’s taken over his body, lets him out sometimes. Never under full power, never enough to be able to pull himself into control, obviously, but they let him see out of his own eyes when they think it will hurt him.  _

_ He doesn’t have a choice but to watch as his own calloused, dirty hands wield his glaive, drawing blood from anyone unlucky enough to get in his way.  _

_ The only saving grace he has is that he hasn’t seen Hamid or Azu or any of the rest of them, in the moments when the infection forces him to watch. It means that they haven’t found his friends yet; haven’t been able to use his body to torture or kill them. Zolf knows he’d be compelled to watch, pulled to the forefront as though his eyelids have been taped open, sinister laugh echoing around his mind as he’s unable to do anything other than succumb to the guilt.  _

_ He prays to Poseidon for the first time in months, and the aching emptiness of the void where his prayers used to go to makes him feel lost, forsaken. Even when he didn’t believe, even when he’d turned his back, he could feel the presence of his god. But now there’s nothing; just a gaping maw of his fear and pain as the alien voice laughs in the back of his mind, mocking him.  _

_ He prays to Poseidon to save him, and even after all these months of silence, the absence of a response causes his heart to slowly sink. That doesn’t stop, though; he prays for his friends, prays that they’ll be able to escape, that whatever this is won’t take them too.  _

_ It’s all he can do. The darkness surrounding him is oppressive, stretching out forever on every side of him, spiraling black fractals that he knows he shouldn’t be able to see when he doesn’t truly have eyes.  _

_ It’s the infinite dark that causes him to curl up on himself, as much as he’s able to without a body, and try to scream, try to break through, try to do anything that isn’t sitting there and succumbing to the presence slowly pulsing over his consciousness.  _

—

Hamid is lost. He hasn’t been able to keep his thoughts straight since he’d watched Zolf turn, as much as he’d tried to compartmentalize his broken emotions into some semblance of capability. It’s harder than he thought, and now more than ever he thinks he understands how Zolf felt back in Paris, why he had to leave in Prague, and Hamid has no intentions of leaving everyone behind but he feels… scattered. 

Everything - a stick snapping in the night, Cel snoring, Wilde muttering something that almost sounds like a prayer under his breath - is another brush against already-frayed nerves, just one more thing tugging at his slowly unraveling mind. But he can’t break, not yet. They still need him, and Wilde is doing a fine job of breaking on his own even if he’s trying his best not to let anyone see it. Hamid doesn’t blame him; he feels close to snapping himself, and he doesn’t have Wilde’s history of betrayal by his friends. 

So he’s trying to keep it together; he thinks Azu sees through the act, but she doesn’t say anything about it. He’s grateful. 

It doesn’t help that Hamid hasn’t been able to let his guard down since he’d watched Zolf turn. He’d been  _ right there _ , mere steps away, and he’d seen the fear and regret in Zolf’s eyes be replaced by a sick glee as he’d straightened up and stepped forward, twirling the glaive in his hands. 

It had been a blur after that; Hamid knows Azu had pulled him away as Zolf stabbed forward in the space where he’d been turning, and he remembers Azu holding him back as he tried to get through to Zolf. They’d all run away, Cel and Azu leading the pack while Wilde trailed behind. 

Zolf had only given chase for a moment before faltering, and Hamid isn’t sure if it had been because he wasn’t able to keep up or if he’d just given up, figured the four of them weren’t worth it. 

He’d thrown up. Off in the bushes, after they’d put enough distance between them and… whatever had been Zolf. Azu has rubbed his back while he’d emptied his stomach, murmuring similarly empty words of comfort. She was trying, she  _ was _ , but Hamid couldn’t get the look in Zolf’s eyes out of his mind. There - even just thinking about it makes him feel nauseous, and he’d thought he was well out of it by now, but he can’t stop thinking about how there was nothing he can do, and then he needs to throw up again. 

Hamid’s heart is shattered; he loves Azu, and Cel is quickly becoming someone dear to his heart, and even Wilde is someone he doesn’t want to lose, but Zolf has been there from the beginning. He’d picked Hamid up from his six months of drinking and gambling and gave him a purpose again. Given him something to do, given him a way to help, and Hamid will never be able to thank Zolf enough for that. 

That’s just another on a long list of regrets that Hamid is never going to be able to do. 

His hands are more claws than not, these days. Something to do with the constant stress and anger and fear coiling in the back of his mind, he assumes, but it does make operating significantly less than efficient. Everyone else must notice, but no one mentions it. He tries to concentrate, tries to will his hands back to hands, and sometimes it works for a day, two. But they always revert. 

Hamid doesn’t have time to worry about it. They need to keep moving, they need to figure out how to stop the virus, they need to figure out how to save Zolf… there’s too much to do. Hamid shoves it to the back of his mind, where he keeps compartmentalizing everything until he has a minute where he can just have a genuine breakdown. But for now, they move forward.

He already lost Sasha and Grizzop and Bertie and his sister, and he’ll have to live with that for the rest of his life. There has to be something they can do, some way they can save Zolf from the infection slowly eating him from the inside out, before it’s too late.

He refuses to lose Zolf too, not to whatever this is. He won’t. 

—

They stalk in the night. Darkvision, always helpful, helps them track their prey. It’s enough to turn one person in a group, nothing more. They move quicker now; they’ve grown, and their blood spreads quicker through their host’s veins. 

Turning others is so easy. It takes barely anything, just a simple brush of skin or blood and a  _ belief _ , and the infection will thrive. They know who they need to turn, understand who will bring the most to their goals. The meritocrats like to think that they understand the game, understand their goals, but they don’t. Turning Guivre was a bonus, an advantage that they took advantage of when he came to raze Eiffel’s Folly to the ground. If they wanted the meritocrats, they could have had them already. 

They want  _ more. _

—

_ Zolf tries endlessly to throw off the infection. He knows it doesn’t work like that, knows that he’ll stay trapped, but it’s either fight with everything he has or lose himself.  _

_ He almost wants Wilde and the rest to find him. Wilde understands the infection better than any of them, knows how insidious it is, and he’d be able to do what the others - well, probably only Hamid, actually - couldn’t. Maybe they could bring him back to the inn and toss him in the cell. Wait for the virus to burn through his veins until there’s nothing left of him, until he’s too far gone to be brought back.  _

_ He never lets himself think about there being a cure. It’s not possible; Wilde and Amelia have been working for months trying to find any sort of solution to that particular problem, and haven’t had any sort of luck so far. And Amelia went dark weeks ago, just before the sparse remains of Wilde’s team showed up and Zolf learned Hamid was still alive. Sasha… hadn’t been so lucky. Sometimes he thinks about would have happened if he’d stayed - being stuck in the darkness is good for introspection, if nothing else, but he can’t see anything changing. Maybe he would have left anyway, unable to deal with all the Harlequins looking at him and expecting to see his father or Feryn. Maybe he would have been left behind in Rome, at the mercy of a spell that claimed the life of the person who best understood it.  _

_ Going over the ‘what-ifs’ has never been a particularly useful exercise.  _

_ But. There’s nothing he can do, except endlessly rail against the consciousness holding him captive, so that’s what he does. _

_ He never gets tired, anymore. _

—

Azu doesn’t know what to do. Hamid’s broken, Cel is more hyper than ever, and Wilde won’t speak. He hasn’t said a thing beyond giving them instructions on where to go next, and any attempt Azu’s made to speak to him about, well, all  _ this _ has been met with a face that looks like it’s been completely made out of stone, and one time Wilde walking off into the woods and disappearing until night fell. Azu had attempted to follow, but one look from him had warned her to stay back. 

She knows Hamid is trying not to think about it. She knows Hamid wakes up at night with tears streaming down his face and screaming from nightmares. She knows he won’t talk about it. 

Azu didn’t know Zolf as well as Wilde or Hamid had, but she still feels a little lost without him here. He’d provided some needed stability after… well. After all the hell that came with Rome. After they’d lost half their party and landed, confused and heartbroken, on the dusty floor of a shop, only for Einstein to fill them in on everything they’ve missed. 

Everything’s been a whirlwind for so long, with no hope of stopping, and Azu feels like they’ve been thrown into it with no preparation or explanation and been expected to save everyone. She doesn’t let it show. She has to hold it together for the rest of them.

Azu understands loss keenly now, although she tries her best to not let herself think about Sasha and Grizzop. The thoughts creep up on her when she’s alone on her watch and staring into the darkness. What she could have done differently. 

Thinking about it doesn’t help. Nothing would have changed, and she’ll hate herself for letting go forever, but they’re not getting Grizzop or Sasha back. It’s easier to push it aside, to give up hope, because that will only hurt her more in the end. It  _ will _ hurt Hamid in the end, and Azu’s not looking forward to that particular realization.

The only thing they can do is continue moving forward, continue  _ trying  _ to save people while they can. She knows the virus is spreading faster than they’d like, faster than Wilde had predicted, and their own timeline is drastically shortened before it’s too late to stop the virus in their tracks.

They need a cure, desperately, and not only because she hates seeing Wilde scratch absently at his scar, hates seeing Hamid turn to speak to someone next to him only to falter when it’s empty, hates seeing Cel stumble over Zolf’s name when they speak. 

Hates how her own heart turns over every time she thinks about it. 

They have to find a cure. Fast.

—

People trust them. The dwarf doesn’t have a kind face, not in the slightest, but they’ve learned how to school it into a mask of caring and sympathy that lasts all the way up to the final blow. The betrayal is sweet to their senses, and the more they grow the more powerful they become. 

The dwarf hates it; they let him watch sometimes, and the revulsion and shame and guilt and anger that freely flows from him is a balm. 

Yes. They are having fun. 

—

Wilde is  _ furious _ . He has to be furious, because if he stops being furious he’ll stop being useful, and that’s the last thing any of them need.

Zolf was one of the few people he’d been able to trust after his team had vanished into Rome with barely a hope of coming back. Grizzop - and doesnt  _ that _ thought sting - had warned him to get another team together, a backup in case everything went wrong, and went wrong it did. Zolf would have been well within his rights to tell Wilde to fuck off when Wilde had finally made contact with him through some… less than appropriate channels for a meritocratic agent. 

He’s been in debt to Amelia ever since, and hated it every step of the way. And, to Zolf’s credit, he had told Wilde to fuck off. Loudly and angrily. Until Wilde had brought Hamid and Sasha into the equation, and then Zolf had been slightly more interested. It had taken a while before either of them really trusted each other. Even now there’s still a line there - Zolf doesn’t forgive Wilde for certain things, and Wilde understands that he doesn’t have to.But they work together well, and sometimes Zolf forces Wilde to go to sleep instead of working on whatever problem he’s found, and Wilde tries not to keep all his cards close to his chest. 

They’re both still working on it; maybe someday they can consider each other friends. But, gods, Wilde would really love to not be betrayed by any more friends or lose anyone else to this... infection.

At least Zolf didn’t get a slash off on him this time, he thinks. That fire-tipped glaive is  _ sharp _ . Wilde touches the scar again, unconsciously, and frowns at his own behavior before letting his hand fall to his lap.

Yeah. Wilde’s angry. And if he has to work harder to maintain the accent, to maintain the careful aloofness that everyone’s come to expect, that’s fine. He’s fine. He balls the anger up in his chest and lets it stay there, lets it power him forward. There’s not time or space for silly things like emotions in this… brave new world.

They have a  _ mission.  _

—

They laugh when the dwarf tries to surface, tries to reassert his control. He’s been quiet for days, sending useless prayers up to a god that’s no longer listening, and plotting. The darkness that surrounds him is  _ them _ , has always been them and always will be, and it can taste his thoughts. He cannot make any moves that they won’t already know to anticipate, no matter how hard he tries.

His attempts are  _ weak, _ and as one they push him back into the darkness, into the strange sunken place deep within his memories that he isn’t able to escape. They are all too happy to let him try again and again; the futility of the attempts humor them, and they know that they won’t lose control over him. The dwarf has become more fun of a host than any they’ve had before, except for perhaps the dragon. The dragon had power and control and  _ fire _ .

The dwarf grows quiet after a while, but never stops trying to break through. It’s become easy to predict when he is going to make another attempt. It becomes a game to them, testing how far he can go before they snuff out any hope he has of success. None of their other hosts had this much fight, and they’re almost sad they haven’t been able to fully turn him to their side. 

There’s something keeping him from turning, and it’s easy enough to rifle through his memories and understand what’s holding him back. They smile when they realize how easy it will be to break him.

—

Cel is… thinking. Hard. They’ve been up since, well, probably sometime yesterday, crouched on a rock as they’ve kept an eye and their remaining ear out for any suspicious noises. They haven’t been able to sleep, not with how fast their mind is racing through possibilities and choices and ideas for how to help. 

They haven’t known Zolf as long as the others; Hamid definitely seems to have been hit the hardest by the turn of events, but Wilde isn’t doing much better. Both of them seem like they’re hanging on by a thin thread, frayed and close to snapping. Cel loves their new friends, and doesn’t want them to be hurting anymore. They want to help. 

They’ve been trying, jotting down notes and thoughts the second they come. Their handwriting is a mix of languages and shorthand, a scribbled mess that wouldn’t be comprehensible to anyone else except maybe Jasper, and even then… well, it doesn’t matter. No one else apart from Cel would be able to follow the maths anyway.

Hamid and Wilde had both discussed the virus enough that Cel believes they have a way to fix everything. They know a decent amount about Shion, thanks to the raid on the keep, and they’ve been going through different formulas in their mind to try and work the problem out. They have ideas - but, well, they always have  _ ideas,  _ that’s nothing new. They have hypotheses, now, and practical ideas of how it can work, and if they can convince Hamid and Wilde and Azu to turn around and let them go back to their lab, they can test it out. 

Maybe they can save everyone, the way they weren’t able to before. Maybe this can be their redemption. 

—

The dwarf has been quiet, recently. They’re sure he’s biding his time again, waiting for them to let their guard down. He doesn’t know that they feel every impulse he has, every thought, and can never surprise them. 

It isn’t until morning that they notice someone is behind them, stalking, but they don’t turn around, not wanting to give the game away. They bide their time, listening, waiting to hear the slight crack behind them. 

Their patience pays off; they hear the whistle of the spell before it can connect, and dodge to the side, ducking behind a rock as what must be a Scorching Ray lands where he’d just been standing. Debris and dirt shoot through the air as it explodes on impact, and they hiss as a small piece of rock scrapes against their arm. 

The smoke fades and they peer out from behind the rock. They recognize these four; they had been with their host when he was taken, had swum around in the host’s thoughts as he attempted to escape. 

A smile creeps onto their face; they’d wanted to break the dwarf, and this is the best chance for them to do it. If he watches his friends die, he’ll be malleable. Be broken enough that they won’t have to strive to turn him. He’ll become theirs. 

“Now, Cel!” the halfling yells, and the tall elf steps forward with some sort of weapon that crackles menacingly. A lightning elemental, then, and a dangerous one at that. 

The elf jabs ahead and they dodge, a quick twist of their body, and smile. 

“ ** _Don’t do that_ ** ,” they say, and the halfling  _ flinches _ away from the look they give him. “ ** _Can you stomach hurting your friend?”_ **

They bring the dwarf to the forefront, let him take the pain, let him watch as his friends come to save him. It’s all in vain. He screams behind their eyelids and their mouth curls again, curls into a terrifying maw across the dwarf’s face as they stare down the four creatures standing in front of them.

“Do it again, Cel,” the orc says, mouth pressed together in a thin line, and the elf lunges again, nearly growling as they miss by a hair; they dance out of the way and cackle, and the elf glares at them. 

The halfling steps forward, fire flickering in his eyes as he snaps. Lights flash around them and they squeeze their eyes shut; the effect passed quickly enough, and then they open their eyes, feeling their blood rush as their other hand wraps around the glaive.

“ ** _Our turn_ ** ,” they say, and the glaive lights itself at their side. They twirl it in their hands and the fire swirls, growing steadily hotter and bigger until it’s an inferno, and then they throw it. It lands at the feet of the group and  _ expands _ , curling into a fiery blaze that licks the tops of the trees. 

The group scatters, and they hear them all shout as they do, fire growing steadily as it cuts them off, separating them. They smile and stalk forward, picking up the glaive as they do. The fire burns, but pain is so fleeting to them, now, as they look around the slowly burning woods, waiting for a hint of movement.

It’s simply bad luck that the halfling is the one they find, clothes smoking as he stands in the center of a circle surrounded by flame. His skin looks… wrong - burnished somehow, but no matter. It’s time. 

They pull the dwarf to the forefront of their mind and relish in his pleas, his shouts, his begging to not hurt the halfling. They ignore it. 

“Don’t come any closer,” the halfling warns, holding up a hand, and they laugh, taking a step forward. Their host is still screaming in their head, desperate and pleading for them to stop, and their laughter reaches a fever pitch.

The halfling stumbles and falls backward, groaning slightly as their head hits the ground, and they twirl their glaive again, stalking closer.

“Cel!” The halfling screams, curling up with a terrified and  _ pained _ look on their face as they descend, laughing maniacally. 

The weapon connects with their side and they scream, collapsing to the ground as the electric currents run along their veins. They spasm on the ground as four shadows stand over their host’s body. 

“Do it,” one of them says, they cannot see who, and then there’s a prickling sensation at their neck. They snarl as the blood runs cold in their veins, as their host’s heart stutters in its chest, and as they try to stand up they realize that their host is no longer responsive, no longer reacting. They try to scramble up and hiss in frustration as the body lays flat on the floor. No -  _ no _ \- they will not be overpowered, they are the endgame, they are meant to win, their victory has been foretold by giants who spoke to them, they will not be beaten by insignificant, small little -

There’s a flash of blinding white light and fire roars along their veins, and then finally a blessed silence throughout the clearing as Zolf, finally, gasps for breath.

—

Zolf is  _ so cold _ . 

He wakes up in the cell, on a hard cot that’s much too familiar to his old sailing days, and gasps as he wakes up, hands coming up to scrabble at this throat as he tries to breathe. His eyes feel like they’re crusted shut, and the back of his throat has a familiar taste of days-old vomit. Both of his hands are shackled to the cot, and as Zolf slips off of it he remembers the anti-magic field, rendering his legs completely useless as he collapses into a weak heap on the floor. 

He can’t stand but he can at least rest on his (useless) legs, staring out through the bars of the cell and seeing Azu, Hamid, and Cel all sitting on chairs outside. Wilde’s nowhere to be found, which Zolf isn’t surprised about but which still disappoints him. He tries to speak, but all that comes out is a hoarse rasp.

None of them move and Zolf does his best to shuffle closer to the bars, shackles pulling uncomfortably at already-sore arms.

“H-Hamid -“ he chokes out, and the halfling starts to stir, eyes blinking open; andthen Hamid’s up on his feet and lighting a nearby lantern, bringing it closer to Zolf’s cell.

“ _ Zolf?”  _ he gasps, kneeling down in front of the bars and wrapping his hands around them. “You’re awake, gods, we didn’t know what to do, Cel administered the cure and you just collapsed, and you weren’t breathing -“ he cuts himself off and presses his hand to his mouth, eyes suspiciously bright in the dim lamplight. “Well, nevermind, I’m so glad you’re awake, god’s.”

He doesn’t move to open the cell and Zolf doesn’t blame him. 

“Is there anything I can get? You must be starving,” Hamid says.

“Water, please,” Zolf croaks, and Hamid jumps up, dashing over to a small table with a pitcher on it. He pours a glass and returns; Zolf shakes the shackles - not accusingly, but as a request for assistance. 

“Oh! Of course,” Hamid says, and Zolf shifts closer to the bars as Hamid tilts the glass toward him, helping him drink. 

The water tastes like a blessing, even as drops spill down the side, and he drinks it gratefully. He feels more himself after downing the entire glass, and coughs, throat still sore from disuse. 

“I want to let you out,” Hamid says, and it’s soft and filled with regret. His hands are white-knuckled where they grip the cold glass, and he ducks his head. “I’m not - we have to be sure the virus is completely gone. I’m sorry.”

Zolf shakes his head. “Hey - Hamid, hey,” and catches Hamid’s gaze as he looks back up at him. “It’s okay. Really. And, uh - thanks.”

“Let me -“ Hamid looks off to the side of the dungeon that Zolf can’t see with a hopeful look on his face.

“It’s been seven days. It’s out of him,” someone says, tense, and Zolf recognizes it as Wilde’s voice, standing far away from him. His memories are muddled but the bare bones of it are still there, and he doesn’t need much to realize how much it must have affected the man to see another one of his allies gone. He can’t see the man through the bars of the cell, even with his darkvision, but he can see Hamid, hands shaking as he undoes the lock to the cell. 

The doors swing open, and it’s a role reversal Zolf hadn’t expected. 

“Zolf! Zolf, oh gods,  _ Zolf,” _ Hamid sobs, and drops to his knees in front of Zolf to pull him into a hug. His tears are staining Zolf’s clothes and beard but Zolf doesn’t care - the shackles are still holding his arms, and as much as wants to he can’t hold Hamid back, can’t rub circles into the space between his shoulder blades, can’t pull Hamid tight into his chest. He does the best he can anyway, pressing his forehead to the side of Hamid’s head, breathing in the familiar scent of smoke and sage. 

“Hamid, can you -“ Zolf says, jangling the shackles again, and Hamid gasps, snapping his fingers, and in a puff of smoke and cold fire they dissolve; and finally, Zolf can wraps shaking arms around Hamid’s back.

“You should be careful,” Wilde says, again, and Zolf recognizes that dark note in his voice from the last time they both lost a valued friend. 

“It’s him, I know it,” Hamid says, and Zolf drops his head onto Hamid’s shoulder, trying to stop from shaking. He was - he was trapped, so alone in that darkness, and having Hamid so close, having all of them so close, is nearly overwhelming. 

“What happened?” he murmurs, trying to center his thinking, trying not to have a complete breakdown. 

“You were turned. We knocked you out, brought you back here, and Cel did… something,” Wilde says, and it’s not dismissive as much as it is  _ short _ . Unaffected. Zolf knows it’s all for show - he’s spent too much time with the man in the past months to believe that this hasn’t hit him in the slightest. 

“Thank you,” he whispers, and Hamid hugs him a bit more tightly. He’s - well, he’ll need to know more about the cure, about what he did, but he can panic and deal with the guilt from all that later. Now, he just wants to let himself have this, a moment of comfort. 

There’s a clattering noise next to him and he glances up to see Cel, smiling as wide as he’s ever seen from them.

“I’m very glad you’re okay!” they exclaim, and then they’re off at a mile a minute. “Seemed a bit dodgy at the end there, a bit too much spasming from what we’d expected, but that’s fine, I can work out the kinks later -“

Azu kneels down beside the two of them while Cel continues talking and wraps her arms around Zolf and Hamid, body shaking slightly. 

“I’m glad you’re alright as well, Zolf,” she says, quiet. “We were all very afraid for you.”

Zolf swallows, heavy, and picks his head up from Hamid’s shoulder to look over at Azu, giving her the briefest smile. “I was too, for a minute,” he says, voice thick, and he’ll have to address the guilt in Azu’s gaze someday, and the regret and pain in Hamid’s, but not today. Not when he’s still too weak to stand.

“Oh, group hug? Are we doing a group hug? I’ve always  _ wanted _ to be part of one of these but normally it’s just me and little Jasper and really, two people aren’t enough for a -“ they’re cut off as Hamid and Azu both pull them into the hug, muffling their words. 

It’s nice. A moment of stillness, blocking out the thoughts and memories in the back of Zolf’s mind that he’s sure are going to keep him waking up screaming. But he’s safe, now, he’s with his friends, and they pulled him out of that dark place, brought him  _ back. _

He holds them all a little bit tighter as tears press at the back of his eyelids, and he lets them fall. 

“This is quite inappropriate,” comes a dry voice from the corner of the cell, closer than before, and when Zolf looks up he sees Wilde standing there, arms crossed. “Really, I think we’ve all shed our fair share of tears on this. Can we get moving again? I shouldn’t have to remind you that there’s still a world to save.”

“Gods, just - get over here, Wilde,” Zolf says, and when Wilde doesn’t move, Azu reaches out and tugs him over to join the hug. Wilde stumbles on the way, suspicious eyes landing on Zolf as he stands in the circle, Azu’s arms around his shoulders. He must be at least slightly satisfied by what he sees, since he eventually relaxes into the hug.

“Thank you,” Zolf says, voice cracking, into Hamid’s shoulder, and he’s not even sure if everyone can hear it. He assumes so by the way the hug tightens slightly, and for the first time in too long, Zolf finally feels safe.

**Author's Note:**

> okay!!! okay!! zero days since nonsense!! have this thing that i rushed to finish!!!
> 
> me looking at how i wrote the infection: hi john hunger 
> 
> also we know nothing abt cel so i am projecting a lot onto them based on what i think abt their potential backstory i am most likely wrong 
> 
> i definitely copped out of explaining fbskdndj sorry


End file.
